Grid Effect

With nothing worthwhile on television last night and still being a little under the weather, we succumbed to something we never thought we would ever succumb too. Now, I have to throw a bunch of qualifiers into the mix before I announce what we watched last night: not only was I feeling sick but I am being heavily medicated, there was no NBA on and we didn’t have any netflix. Now without the option of a viable alternative, we did something we never thought we were capable of: we watched Beauty and The Geek.

But that isn’t the humiliating part of the story, that comes in the fact that we actually kind of enjoyed it (currently we are drinking Jameson at work we are so depressed by this, it’s a good thing we’re unarmed, otherwise there would be no telling what we’re capable of). It did seem to conjure up some bad memories for the geek faction of the contest, in fact we were downright mortified for them during the challenge portion of the episode.

First of all, a little exposition for those who are unfamiliar. Beauty and The Geek, at least this season, took approximately ten classically attractive women and ten socially challenged guys and pitted them against each other in various forms of competition. Whichever team loses in whatever that week’s contest is, are subject to elimination by the other team, who nominate approximately half of the losing team for an elimination round. Supposedly just being in the limited confines of a mansion in Los Angeles is supposed to create a bond between the beauties and the geeks? We’re really not sure.

Your teams, respectively.

Anyhow, the challenge this week was a football game at the Coliseum between the geeks and the beauties. Yes, a football game. Just what the team of geeks needs, a reinforcement of why they are there in the first place by pinpointing a significant reason why these geeks are often considered geeks: under-achievement in competitive sports. It’s bad enough they were forced to play football against their will, but then against a team of physically fit girls, also reinforcing part of the reason they might have trouble attaining such women in the first place. At least if the played the actual USC football team no one would blame them if they got hammered.

The game itself was almost painful to watch. One guy actually had to be assisted off the field by the medical staff after one of the girls tackled him, then another was bitched at by one of the more aggressive beauties for blocking too hard. It really struck me as a lose-lose for them, but since one beauty and one geek risked elimination by switching teams, they were forced to try and win for their new teammate brave enough to switch alliances. And the geeks lost in convincing fashion: 24-12.

The format only got worse from there. As they lined up to decide which geeks the beauties were going to send to the elimination round, we discovered that they were now going to divy up the contestants in pairs consisting (obviously) of one beauty and one geek, but since there were only seven beauties and eight geeks because the beauty who joined the geeks football team was eliminated via losing the game, one of the geeks wasn’t going to be picked and thus sent packing.

The decision to go all Sadie Hawkins on them seemed exceptionally cruel. All these guys’ insecurities probably stem from adolescent/high school experiences similar to this one, they might as well have tied them to a flagpole and gotten it over with. Still, there are redeeming qualities to the show. We’re not sure if the series is always so cold, but we’re also wondering if the people are always so decent, as that’s not usually par for the course with reality programming.

For the most part, it seemed like basic human decency takes hold on this series. There wasn’t any mocking of stupidity of the women or of the shortcomings of the men, everyone was just….accepting. Which is something foreign on any reality show we’ve ever seen. While the humanity of it was provided by the contestants (one girl even waited outside for the geek injured during the football game to come home from the hospital), the producers seemed intent on begrudging all of them for their flaws. Somehow this was circumvented by everyone being exploited.

We probably won’t make this appointment viewing, because we struggle to do that with any reality TV, even Survivor, which we’ve been recapping since our inception. But the series did have heart, a vaguely original premise and managed to be humorous at times, usually not at the expense of those participating. If this were the standard for reality television, we might not mock it so mercilessly.

South Park recap tomorrow.